S5 E11 The Benign Prerogative
by JDPostEpisodeChallenge
Summary: Written by Syberina5 Title: A Curious Lack of Entropy Disclaimer: I am really not any good at physics. I did, however, win a Chemistry prize in high school. Summary: Those days it was a lot about permission and plausible deniability.
1. Prologue

_Author's Note: I recently ran through the Post Ep Challenge list and was surprised to see 1) so many fills be about how Josh and Donna are already together by that episode and 2) that nothing had been done for "The Benign Prerogative."_

They were like physical blows, the call, the comments, the conversation. No one but me seemed to remember that this was a young man, a family, people whose lives were over or would never be the same. They just rambled on the way they always did about when to tell the President, what to say to the press, and there across the hall the First Lady was smiling and a boy was dead and I was the only one in the whole White House who understood, who cared. I was the one who had held this boy's life in my hands, had listened as his mother begged, had begged in turn, and let the President turn him down and now he was dead. At that point it was really either vomit or do the whole sackcloth and ashes thing that Toby jokes about so I bolted. Neither one was something I particularly wanted the company I was keeping to have to witness.

oooooooooooooo

I admit I sought CJ's eyes for permission because I knew she would give me what I needed. Those days it was a lot about permission and plausible deniability. It was a sea of not my finest moments, but I was trying to change the world and as the saying goes—though maybe it is just a cut-rate Nicholson flick— "Something's gotta give." In this case it was CJ. And not a moment too soon.


	2. One

She was heaving giant breaths—bent over at the waist, cause unclear—when he reached her. He rushed to right her. Put his hands on her arms and pulled her upright, towards him, into his arms. But she pushed away, gasping, "Oh God," as she shoved him only far enough away to hit the shoes his mother had given him last Hanukkah.

"Oh God," he gasped as well—more of a gentile curse than a Jewish one because they always were; he'd been more likely to invoke Jesus' name than any other Jew he'd met (and certainly more than Toby) because there weren't many foul mouthed Jewish kids in his circle growing up (the token non-WASP at nearly every Connecticut and Westchester gathering—every level of school included)—and jerked to pull her hair back (more than one university girlfriend had taught him that much). "Donna," he said because it was what he always said. When in doubt state the obvious; her name wasn't in question.

"Oh God, Josh, I'm sorry." Stating the obvious might have been a habit she picked up from him but the evidence—in his opinion—wasn't definitive.

"It's okay. It's fine. Are you okay?" he asked trying to assess, to reel her in and assure himself that a little vomit was the only damage.

"Ugh," she moaned and pushed back. "Don't," she gagged. "I'm serious. I could blow again at any second. Like Mount St. Helens."

"Yeah, you're thinking of that terrible movie with the chick from _Terminator_. Nobody is actually that worried about Mount St. Helens. They're more worried there'll be another _Terminator_ movie."

"That's not what I'm worried about right now," she said with his hand still holding most of her hair off her face, out of the range of fire.

"Yeah," he mumbled more out of understanding that conviction. "It's not your fault, Donna."

"Don't," she ordered in her _You will consume vegetables_ voice.

"It's not," he was back to stating the obvious. "People are denied clemency everyday Donna; that he didn't have any hope says more about the system than it does about you."

"We're supposed to be what fixes the system, Josh," she said, head snapping up, clearly changing the premise of his argument.

"You heard Leo; the President could have pardoned him in the spring." That it was still winter, that she must be freezing with the cold sweat of sick becoming truly cold on her skin occurred to him. "He could have been home by summer, Donna, but he gave up." A cardinal failing to Josh's mind. He dropped her hair to shrug off his suit coat but she shook her head at that too.

"He shouldn't have had to. He got on to that list fairly, Josh, his file wasn't finagled into my hands," _hers_ not his, theirs, the President's. "What the Republicans have to say about it shouldn't matter, the pushback shouldn't matter. His life, his punishment, that's all it should be about."

But it couldn't be. Nobody knew the politics better than Josh. Nobody knew who would vote any which way based on donors, history, the vagaries of fate—though that was more Donna's domain some votes—than Josh. "Donna." He took a deep breath as the motorcade took over the drive. "We'll get to help more people this way. More Donovan Kaehlers will get to go home to their families because _the President_ made this choice."

"Morrisey," she said, more conviction in her voice, as she pulled her hands from his arms, folded her arms between them.

"What?" he asked.

"His name was Donovan Morrisey." While he was grateful that she was pulling herself together—an a-mess Donna was one of the signs of the apocalypse—he wasn't thrilled that she was pulling further and further away from him. Even standing there with her stomach acid eating its way into his socks he didn't really want to let her go (though he would because she wanted to be let go).

"There was nothing you could have done." And there wasn't. Josh would have made sure of it because nobody knew the politics better. He wouldn't have let the President pardon Donovan Kaehler… Morrisey. It was his job to get the President's initiatives through and this one boy, barely a man before he was locked up, wouldn't have stopped Josh. It was why he didn't want Donna within ten feet of the Oval let alone standing in front of the President, a begging proxy, one vulnerable heart pleading with another. It had been a miracle the President hadn't caved to her soft, determined voice. Hell, Josh nearly had, had nearly cut her off before she could talk about getting on her knees—which in a totally different context he might have had to dismiss her for (and the misery that would have ensued he wouldn't have been able to put on Leo's head).

So, when they went to return to the building, he had not been able to keep from touching her—at arm's length maybe since she had pushed him away every time he had tried to comfort her—trying to show her that she was not alone in the fault she would not let him deal away, in the sorrow she felt at the loss of a young man's life, at the ineffectiveness of the system—_which, really, hadn't she made it somewhat better today? Did this one single life cancel out all the others she had given a new lease? Thirty-five for the one?_—and that only a handful would have been chosen at all if she hadn't convinced him because she had spent two weeks looking at the faces of these people, fully people to her open heart.

What bugged Josh—even as he was drinking from the keg of glory that each standing ovation the SOTU agenda extravaganza wrought—was that he had put Donna in that position. Sure, if he hadn't they would have pardoned only six of the most hard-luck cases, they wouldn't have let Toby run with it through a whole news cycle, but she wouldn't be puking her guts out over the blood on her hands like the softest Lady Macbeth. And he hadn't even done it because she'd asked for more responsibilities. Yes, he knew she could do it—it was Donna; she could do everything but create a surplus with one hand tied behind her back (for that she'd need the President's economics Nobel and a Democratic Senate)—but he'd made her take the files and read through them because he was kind of lazy—not do nothing lazy, but "I'll take the twenty on the left" lazy—and he'd rather duke it out with the majority whip than files of people who couldn't even vote (which was one of the reasons this "Law & Order" bullshit had such strong backing). Ultimately, it was fitting that Donna had shared her lunch—and he knew it was her lunch and not her dinner for the same reason Donna knew he hadn't had dinner at that point either (a good meal companion was not to be laughed at—with, not at)—with his shoes.

He watched strangers hug Donna—and why not? She'd brought home their loved ones, freed them from the bars of their oppression!—and watched her welcome their embrace with the same need as she had shoved him away. She smiled at them, not a full smile but a higher wattage than she'd graced him with in hours. They should be doing a victory lap, dancing to the radio, walking arm in arm to his car or the Hawk & Dove. But instead he was across a room, waiting for her to break.

Maybe this was the closest to that Christmas Eve he'd ever know. What torture it must have been for Donna to sit at her desk, taking messages while she thought about the coffee growing cold in the East Wing conference room between Stanley's hands, sitting there all day waiting to finally get him the medical care she'd been after since the morning he'd walked in with his hand firmly buried in his pocket—not that his small subterfuge was enough to fool Donna; she'd had an apology letter to the Republican from Nebraska Second waiting for his signature within five minutes to get a good look at what he was hiding. Nothing got past Donnatella Moss except her own heart strings.

He'd been guarding those for years and—of _fucking_course—he needn't have been worried about gomers or naval officers but sad-sack felons. He handed her heartache to her like a con man because he didn't want to deal with it.

The keg of glory tasted like Natty Bo and sand when it was mixed with guilt.

It was the President who gave him permission the second time. He'd looked over at Donna's half-mast smile and said, "You'll make sure she gets home alright?" as both a question and an order—Commander and Chiefs apparently have that skill.

"Yeah," Josh had returned as the President gripped his elbow and crossed the room to speak with someone else.

Josh had hovered all night, excepting praise—though he didn't feel like he'd earned it—and picking his teeth with the opposition policy he intended to demolish to bring about the President's agenda—it was important to put on a good show particularly for certain Congresspeople. He was never very far away from Donna (who was never very far away from one or another family of special guests—everyone from the White House knew to keep their distance and people from outside had no idea how instrumental she'd been to the evening's events).

Finally even her half smile had begun to falter and she excused herself to her desk. He padded up quietly behind her, put a hand on her back and said, "Come on," while angling his head towards the lobby. "Get your coat. I'll give you a ride."

"Okay," she said a quirked a sad smile at him. Instead of putting her coat on and flipping her hair out from under the collar—which was always fun to watch—she started gathering files and binders into her bag.

"No, really, Donna, just your coat. It's late. You don't have to do anything else tonight."

"I appreciate the night off boss"—which was more distance between them, and for once the reminder of their professional relationship rose his hackles—"but I'm really going to need something to do at three in the morning when I can't pretend that I'll fall asleep in another couple minutes."

He was all too familiar with the ghosts of their job that followed them home and took up residence in the bed. "Yeah," he said and took her overloaded bag from her, slung it over his shoulder. "You know what I have to say to that, Nurse Ratchet?" He put on what he liked to think of as his Donna voice—high, smooth, airy—"You should try a bath or meditating. Bed, Bath, & Beyond has all these really great sound machines. We could go get you one of them."

"Okay, yeah, it _is_ annoying but you were recovering from having a bullet rip through part of your heart," his heart lurched in his chest, all too willing to reenact the events, "I just had a hard day at work."

"Yeah, so maybe one of those things will actually work." Because they never had for him. Whatever their mojo, it had not been enough to convince his mind that he wouldn't have another nightmare where he was dying, actually dying.

He kept it up—light and silly—as they headed out of the West Wing, through the lobby, and even on the drive. When he parked and got out of the car, he waved away all of Donna's protests and simply carried her massive bag—still on his side of the car. They walked, chatting easily, down the street to her building and up the steps to her nearly new apartment—the first time she had ever lived alone and one of the only things Richie Rich ever did that didn't make Josh want to slug him even a little ("Yeah, it's a great place, but Bryce is studying abroad next year—the whole year; this internship in Brussles, so lame—it's like some friend of his grandmother's aunt's who knows, and it's like New York where, like, the rent is like from 1945.").

And the whole time he still felt like he was waiting in the bullpen for Leo to tell him he could finally take her to the ER to get her hand looked at.


	3. Two

"You didn't have to come up," she admonished him.

"I know."

"I am more than capable of carrying my own bag."

"I know."

"I'm fine, Josh."

"I know." _Like hell._

She was fliting around—that was the only term he could come up with for it—hanging her coat, sorting the mail, putting her baby pink kettle on to boil—part of him loathed that kettle (she'd "lent" it to him when he was stuck at home and had used it to make him endless cups of not-coffee) and yet he still had the urge to stroke the chip in the enamel he knew was where the pink breast cancer ribbon used to be (three apartments and two roommates ago)—organizing cups and condiments and selecting the tea Donna thought fit the energy needs of the situation (nothing too soothing for Josh because he still had to get home but something that had a prayer of settling her). The space was small and so rather than argue with her he moved into the way. Putting himself in close proximity he relied on Donna's vulnerable nature. Sooner or later the façade would crack, the tears would flow, and Josh would be there to hold her up until she'd wrung out enough of the sorrow, anger, and injustice to sleep.

He'd kept his coat on against the drafts and low heat of her "vintage" late night apartment and she avoided contact with its open flaps as she persisted in fussing—in increasingly small circles—and blathered on. It confirmed his suspicion that she was nearly to the point she'd been holding herself back from since the phone call that had made a dead albatross of something she should be proud of.

"God, Josh, I told you the tea—" she started as she turned to tell him something—probably to stop crowding her—and slammed into his chest.

He reached up to steady her elbow—an instinctual reaction—and watched her crumble. It was only moments before her face was drenched and splotchy (it looked so painful, like parts of her were being pulled out of the hot spots on her otherwise clammy skin) and she was clutching the lapels of his blazer. He wrapped his arms as tightly around her as he felt he could without hurting her and told her over and over again that it wasn't her fault, she did everything she could. At one point she'd started to shiver, so he released her enough—one arm at a time—to wrap the sides of his coat around her and close his eyes against her shoulder as he ran a hand over her hair and prayed for her pain to stop. He said please over and over, though he wasn't sure who he was asking or really for what.

Some time later he'd herded her onto the couch, started a scalding hot bath—he'd dumped in stuff from a bunch of the different jars on the side in hopes that that's what they were for; she'd always been putting crap in the water when she'd forced him to "relax in the tub"—and fixed her the mug of tea she'd started. He left it on the sink and her in the bathroom to go look in her room for something vaguely pajamas like.

Once he found them—and saw a couple things he was doing his best to scrub from his conscious mind (_You perv, she's in there _crying!)—he cracked open the door and said, "Here, I found these," while trying to put them on a countertop he couldn't see.

There was a watery laugh. "You can come in, Josh. I am well covered by a mountain of bubbles that would keep Jabba the Hutt decent."

He took the witty quip as a good sign and pushed the door open further. He saw the tea on the counter where he'd left it and put down the clothes to pick it up. He reached over to her in the tub and watched her take it from him before sitting on the toilet lid.

"You're still in your coat. Is it that cold? Should I bang on the radiator?"

Josh looked down at himself and realized that she was right, that he was pretty completely overdressed but that—despite the moist heat of the steamy bathroom—the pit of his stomach was still icy. "I'm fine."

"Thank you," she said, throwing, "for bringing me home tonight," on the end to keep their boundaries up—another sign she was feeling more herself.

He knew she meant more than that and he was willing to bet she knew he knew, but the stack of cards that was the magic trick of their working relationship closed certain verbal loopholes and left others wide open.

"I'll be okay now," she continued—she always would have been okay; it was the short term heartbreak that he was trying to treat, to mitigate in some way. "It's late. Really you should get some sleep. There'll be plenty to do tomorrow." Because there would be plenty of spin to do, plenty of heads of hair on fire that needed squelching (a few that might need to be lit).

But the President had also meant more when he'd given Josh an order to take care of her. Say what you would about Jed Bartlet—and Josh had heard more than anybody, save Mrs. Bartlet's mother he'd imagine—he was a man who understood the power of the well-selected word, of what was left unsaid. "[M]ake sure she gets home alright" could mean put her in a taxi but that "make sure" and the "alright" tagged on at the end gave it the tenor of care, healing, support all things Josh knew the President would have done himself if he hadn't been the leader of the free world, would try to do in his personally penned thank you letter to Donna for her efforts in the weeks leading up to the State of the Union. Josh was taking that tacit permission to heart; he was damn sure going to make her as alright as was in his power to do.

He was waiting for her on the couch when she came out—still in his jacket, still that icy block in his torso—with the ends of her hair wet and her arms wrapping around her middle like the cold air was a shock after the warmth of the bathroom. "Here," he said pulling the afghan (her Minnesotan grandmother had crocheted it for her to take away to school when she was accepted to UW and it had made the trip to New Hampshire three years later and been a staple on the campaign bus; Josh himself had slept under it on numerous occasions) off the back of the couch. He rose to wrap it around her and she put a hand on his arm where it enveloped her and said, "Thank you," again for—ostensibly—the blanket but really for the effort he was going to for her.

Her face was still so drawn, the spark of hope, of joy that usually kept it lit and uplifted seemed to have guttered out and he found it like a knife scraping alongside that ice, sharpening both. So he let his arms continue around her and pull her to him, kiss her forehead. She shivered again—and not in any kind of flattering way—which led him to say, "Come on, let's tuck you in." She waggled he eyebrows and his lips quirked up—nothing like their usual level of innuendo.

He took her hand—it was smooth and cold, too cold—and used the other to lift the afghan so it didn't drag.

In her room he pulled back the covers and sat her on the edge. Her feet were bare and he remembered seeing socks somewhere during his earlier hunt. Luckily they were in the first drawer he tried and if other things had been in there his eyes didn't register them. "Here," he said and he knelt. She let him put them on her feet like she was a child before chaffing them a little to get the blood flowing more and lifting them into the bed. He brushed the hair off her forehead as his father had done to him when he said goodnight and went to leave.

"Josh," she called, her voice tremulous and smaller than he'd ever heard it before. "Will…" he watched her second guess herself. "Will you stay? Just for a little while? Just… until I fall asleep, maybe?"

He nodded because he wasn't sure he could speak. Sitting on the bed, by her covered feet, he pulled off his shoes and socks—they probably still smelled—he should have left them in the hall or something but he didn't want to leave the room—so he put them under the bed. Still in his shirt and tie (loosened, top button undone somewhere along the way), blazer and coat, he laid his head on the pillow next to her pillow.

On his side he watched her jerkily turn to face him and smoothly slip her hands—palm to palm—between the pillow and her cheek in some cherubic caricature. She lifted the corner of her mouth at him, still too sad to approximate a true smile. He used a hand to ball the pillow up a bit—how could she sleep on pillows that were little better than paper?—and left his hand on the bed, a few inches from his chin, only a little farther from hers. He watched her close her eyes, saw them drift back open to focus on his hand before purposely closing again three times. He watched her pull the hand under her cheek from its nestled home to rest on the comforter near his and determinedly close her eyes. He was tempted to smile, under any other circumstances he would have found it sort of adorable that she refused to take the step first.

She'd goad him into it, he'd goad her, but they were both so careful of the line, neither one ready for what would befall them for crossing it, both of them wanting to—often by turns. Her eyes blinked open and shut a few more times and he wondered if her thoughts were of the wide awake nightmare in remembering, seeing his mother begging, looking at the pictures from his file, imagining his lifeless body on the concrete floor of his cell. So Josh reached out that little bit further and wrapped his hand around hers.

Her slightly more forceful exhale told him that she was not yet asleep, that she had felt him take her hand. The next few deep, steady breaths came and went before they evened out. Her eyes stayed closed. He found himself drifting closer to their joined hands, his eyes closing as well.

At some point in the night—though they were still in the encompassing dark of the middle of the night—she'd worked her way under his coat again, her head under his chin, and he'd hitched one leg over hers to keep his foot warm beneath the coat—the cold's effect on his other foot must have been what woke him. Loathe as he was to move, he dug around with the offended appendage until he'd gotten an edge on the quilt and worked his foot under it. Somehow or other his cold foot found her warm one. With only the sheet between them, hers soon warmed his up enough that he noticed the icy pit in his stomach was finally gone.


	4. Three

When he was properly awake, Saturday morning light coming through the window's thin curtains—"Sheers, Josh, they aren't supposed to keep out light only nosy neighbors," Donna would correct him repeatedly later—he looked at her hair, glistening in the sunlight, where it rested on her pillow—his pillow? Their pillow? He wasn't nearly perceptive enough to be able to tell or distractible enough to care beyond some infinitesimally small passing thought. Her face was tucked too closely to him to make out much more except for the fanning of her cool—at least in comparison to their combined heat—breath across the skin of his neck. To be blunt, he was far more entranced by the feeling of her beneath his coat. Her arm was not just beneath his heavy wool overcoat but also the jacket he'd worn to work so that her hot hand pressed his work shirt and undershirt to his overheated body. His in return was splayed on her back, the feel of the t-shirt he'd found the night before soft and uninterruptedly smooth, smooth enough that he knew there was nothing else beneath it.

The sun pouring through the window was heating up the room like a greenhouse and in his suit and winter coat he was starting to sweat in uncomfortable ways. Nevertheless, he didn't pull away. Didn't want to. Despite the swelter under the wool he still wanted to be closer to her, was with tiny muscular shifts. He was aware that she was still slumbering, peacefully asleep in her own bed, uninterrupted by disturbing dreams of incarceration and blame.

His mind drifted around recent events—not moving in any sort of order, flashing to one, another, blending them into a remix of his life. He felt her crying against him (the only time he'd seen tears well in her eyes and spill over); heard the President's command that he _would_ make sure she got home alright; saw Toby's face when Josh said the people he trusted could be counted on one hand; remembered the panic in Amy's voice when she'd said the President fired her and the panic in his own when he told her how to fix it and the way that even their professional friendship—let alone their naked friendship—wasn't strong enough to stand when the shoe was on the other foot even a day later; he smelled the fruity shampoo Donna used on her hair in the Oval, his office, her office, motorcades, Indiana cornfields, hospital rooms, ballrooms, and street corners, and lobbies, and his bedroom and her bedroom.. her bed. He smelled that same smell for the last seven years as he was smelling on the woman beside him whose bed he was lying in with her in his arms.

He hadn't even checked to see if he could trust her after Carrick, after Commander Jackass, after Calley, after Rosslyn and that Christmas.

And last night he had shown both of them that she could trust him.

He felt this balloon explode in his chest only instead of cold helium or an empty rush of wind it felt like warm, thick, soft liquid coating his insides and filling up all the spaces in between the tattered, stitched together bits of him. It wasn't Donna's friendship, her loyalty, her eyes when she convinced him some crazy Donna story was real—Freddie Briggs in the AG's office—but _Donna_. The bugs eyes and Bartlet-like trivia, the nutty humor, the constant nattering and pestering and poking that even his mother hadn't been able to maintain when he was young all seemed to hang together in this way that filled up his office and now his arms and… _had it been that way the _whole_ time?_ Josh didn't know, couldn't say when or how but only knew for sure that it was definitely the case.

While he'd had an inkling a few times in the past—aside from their usual innuendo-laden teasing—that his mind wasn't as firmly in the colleagues-and-friends department—because he had noticed that Claudia Jean was a knockout but it had never knocked _him_ for such a loop that he forgot what he was saying before—he'd always been able to shove it aside and pull up another woman (a non-professional-subordinate woman) and think something along the lines of "Yeah, that." But lying there—Donna's hair tickling his chin—even early days Amy, mid-campaign Mandy, and Evelyn Baker Lang's in stilettos were swatable gnats, not engaging temptations.

Not really sure what else to do with himself as the steamroller of his own emotions backed slowly over him, Josh continued to lay there, sweating, holding Donna as close as he dared. He knew eventually she'd wake up and all his argumentative power wasn't going to be enough to keep Donna from getting up or—worse—getting creeped out. It was a short term solution anyway, another CR at 79¢ on the dollar. What Josh was realizing he needed was long term change—terrifyingly—and that was way harder to arrange. It wouldn't just be up to him and Donna—who, rather egotistically, he felt sure was already on team or easily convinced to be so—weighing in on any future legislative agenda. The Oval and the cadre of senior staff who went with it, Counsel's, and—God help him—both whips were going to want in on this particular pie, no matter what Josh and Donna wanted.

This was a good reason to have kept the overwhelming feeling locked away wherever it had been since it began (because there was no way a feeling this large had grown up overnight). His whirring brain tried a time or two to see if it could elbow the unruly newcomer into a closet even a boarded up room but even the less experimental shoves resulted in a rebounding growth.

It was shortly before she woke that—no closer to a plan to achieve any of these new goals—it dawned on Josh that what was really called for was systemic change and those are almost never achieved with anything short of a new amendment.

He had a good head for planning, for the mosaic of goals, desires, and compromises that a large number of players came with and the new set he was piecing together flew completely out of his head as Donnatella Moss stretched against him like a cat, mewling and contorting. His eyes went wide and his loins grew embarrassingly heavy when the hand under his coats curled and scratched down his back—and yeah, _for sure_ he never thought of CJ like that—before wrapping around him more tightly—bringing both of them closer to his embarrassment—so she could nuzzle her cheek against his chest.

Josh, still shocked at the fervor of his own response, tried—and failed—to lie as pliantly around her as he had been. The stiffness in his body quickly noted a growing stiffness in hers that had not been present when she was fully asleep only moments before. Josh—mind at the ready—spun around the idea that perhaps she was also fighting an embarrassment, perhaps one less lascivious than his and possibly even much more platonic (though he really hoped not). With no clear plan of action Josh fell back on advice from a sage upper classman, "Stick to the status quo until you know what you're gonna fuckin' do."

So he laid there letting his mind spin, trying to find what he was gonna fuckin' do, holding Donna who he was pretty sure was awake and pretty sure knew he was also awake.

It was some time later—both of them still letting the other feign plausible deniability—when Josh gave up trying to get any further in designing a political campaign on his own. There was only so much he could do without definitive confirmation (since he didn't need to look any more like a pathetic idiot this election cycle, thanks) and maybe a little bit of patented Donna help. She always seemed to be able to say just the right thing to tip his brain into the place where it could see the near impossible solution to the Gordian Knot in his hands. Yet, he hesitated—his ego finally deflated enough for him to question. What if Donna did not want him as he wanted her? What if she had wanted him at one point but had gotten over it by dating gomer after gomer? What if she still wanted Jack? What if Amy had been the straw (multiple straws) that broke the camel's back? Would she look at him in pity? Would she feel so bad, would it be so awkward, that she had no choice but to quit her job and leave him completely?

Eventually he let out a strangled, tortured, "Donna" in plea. He couldn't even work up a full sentence.

"Yeah?" she asked, her voice rough from disuse.

"I…" he took a deep breath and pulled away, only far enough to get some cool air between them and see her face.

At the look in her eyes—not fear, or regret, or sadness but insecurity—he felt that feeling in him expand again, only the edges of it seemed to cut through him with both fear and want. He got a little lost there, lost in the newly acknowledged feelings, the variegated blue in her irises, the _what if_. His mind kept supplying this long drawn-out call for her: _Donna_. Repeated this one needy utterance devoid of sarcasm or humor or annoyance. Afraid that if he said her name again it would come out like it did in his brain he licked his lips and ran a finger over her cheek to brush away wisps of her hair. "Hi."

"Josh?" she asked sounding more unsettled, more worried, more like the woman who refused to let him outside for whole weeks of his life.

Josh could not say anything, could hope that this feeling went back to wherever it came from on its own as it had after momentary appearances in the past, or he could ask her one question—it might give away some of his position but there was no other way to find out that wouldn't make a fool of one or both of them. "Donna,"—_God, it did sound needy_—"I… I think… Do you think it's time to…" he took a deep breath. "If I went to talk to Leo about this, where would you stand on the issues?"

She looked at him like he was suddenly a different, not-human color. "I'm pro-pardons, Joshua. This… it was awful but—"

"No." he cut her off—reminding her of what had happened was the opposite of what he was trying to do. "Not, that; I don't think anybody doubts where you are on that." He took another deep breath—his therapist was always telling him to breathe—and returned that finger to her cheek, watched it sweep slowly down her face, "This." His eyes pulled away from her soft skin to see what her reaction was.

"Josh," she said haltingly—it seemed they were both having trouble with words. She blinked at him, gaped a little and he still wasn't sure if it was because _Ew, gross, you're like my brother_ or _Oh God, is this finally happening?_. The answer to that last bit might kill him—which he already knew wasn't a fun thing; dying bad.

She still hadn't responded and he was starting to vibrate from nerves. "Donna," he growled, "you're killing me here." He had to close his eyes at the panic in hers, had to bring his forehead to hers on the off chance that he'd ever get to touch her again.

"Sorry, I…" he felt her repeated shallow breaths on his face, "what was the question again?"

He smiled, palmed her cheek, rubbed a thumb over the smooth flesh, "If I talk to Leo about _this_, where do you stand on the issue?"

She laughed a little and new, even warmer bubble inside of him burst open. "I don't know," she mirrored him by putting a hand on his cheek, stroking through a night's worth of scruff. "Is right next to you a clear enough answer?"

"Yes," he said opening his eyes to see her smile and feel her pull his face towards hers. "Hey, hey," he said taking his hand from her cheek to wrap it around her wrist and pull her hand—regrettably—away. "I… trust me I am with you on that front," and he looked into her eyes with more of the lust he'd been feeling since he realized just what kind of lust he was feeling, "but… Donna, I have no idea what Leo is going to say, and if the President, or CJ, or… I just… until we know, I just…. We've waited seven years, Donnatella. What's a few more hours? And, you know, maybe a little bathroom time?"

She laughed, turned her hand in his and squeezed it, looked down and said, "Leo, the President… they won't say no will they?"

"No," he said as definitively as he could in close quarters with a woman he really never wanted to see cry again. "They can't; we're adults. They can say we can't work together. They might ask us to wait until… but they can't tell us no."

She took a breath, looked into his eyes again. "Okay," her smile was slow and went all the way through the sorrow and worry in her eyes, "I can do a little longer. What do you think… ten, twelve hours?"

He smiled at her, had to stop himself from kissing her by squeezing her hand back. "Maybe a full eighteen if the President decides we need to know the complete history of courtship from Mesopotamia to the Inuit."

They laughed. They'd laughed together so frequently for so long, but now Josh knew they would be a _they_ no matter how long the President droned on.


	5. Epilogue

I could only comfort myself with one thought. It wasn't that the plane was going as fast as it could—it wasn't; Toby called me while I was waiting at security and told me that if I made a nuisance of myself demanding that things go faster that I'd be arrested and no good to Donna, so it wasn't like I could tell the pilot to floor it—that the White House had enough power to put a call through to the plane if something happened—I couldn't name the thing, give it the power of being thought, let alone said—or that she was now being protected by the full weight of both the US and Israeli military. It was that she knew. Donnatella Moss knew I loved her, knew that I was in love with her. Miracle of miracles, she loved me back. So I sat there, the whole flight, praying in a way I hadn't since my father, and reading over the ridiculous number of e-mails we'd sent with their bizarre (to anyone else) signs of affection, each one confirmation that she knew. Donna knew I loved her and so she had to know that I was on my way.

There was a sea of pain that was somehow in a sea of fog, so it hurt—it hurt _so_ much—but I couldn't find it, I couldn't name it, and I couldn't care because the fog was numbing my brain (though only sort of the pain). Nothing worked right, nothing made sense. I felt lost in my own body, untethered, adrift in those weird conjoined, stacked, something seas. And it went on like that for so long, nothing real, nothing solid—even my own body. Until someone was holding my hand, stroking my face, giving them place and shape for the first time in ages. A voice somewhere said, _I'm here; I'm right here_, and I could have cried because that meant that I was there too. Wherever _here_ was, I was and I was not alone.


End file.
